France baffled by release of hostages

Two French journalists flew home to a heroes' welcome yesterday after being held hostage in Iraq. But questions were immediately asked about exactly how and why they had been released after more than four months.

Christian Chesnot and Georges Malbrunot landed at a military airfield outside Paris, hugged tearful relatives in the freezing rain, and were greeted by the prime minister, Jean-Pierre Raffarin, and President Jacques Chirac, who interrupted his Christmas holiday in Morocco to be there.

Looking fit and well, the two spoke lucidly of their 124-day ordeal. "We talked Arabic to our captors, we eased the tension whenever we could, and we trusted in France's efforts to free us," Malbrunot said. "It was a difficult experience - sometimes a very difficult experience. But we never gave up hope."

Chesnot added: "We were kept in good conditions, in five or six different houses around the country. We were not mistreated. The first few days were hard, of course. We had to record videotapes. But we understood they didn't want to kill us straight away, and we started talking to them. Gradually the pressure fell."

Commentators and opposition politicians, while expressing relief at the release, questioned why it had taken so long to free them, and what exactly had prompted their captors to do so.

"French diplomacy comes out of this episode tarnished," said the left-leaning Libération. "Its traditional Arab policy and non-alignment in the Bush crusade in Iraq did not protect it from the worst, nor carry the day on the international scene. It must draw the conclusions - and explain its failings."

Other papers said the affair was "cloaked in shadows and uncertainty", and "too bizarre to be altogether what it appears".

Mr Raffarin insisted to party leaders that the government had not paid a ransom. "The prime minister said on several occasions that there had been no ransom demand, and of course no ransom was ever mentioned or paid," said Bernard Accoyer of the governing UMP party.But François Bayrou of the conservative UDF party said he was "well aware that one has to distinguish between what a prime minister can say, and what he has to keep discreet or secret".

Jean-Marc Ayrault of the opposition Socialists said yesterday was "a day of celebration", but "a time will come for explanations".

The release was negotiated through intermediaries, according to Mr Raffarin.

According to Le Monde, up to 20 agents from France's counter-espionage agency DGSE, based in the Baghdad embassy, handled all contacts with the reporters' captors, a minor Sunni militant group calling itself the Islamic Army of Iraq, and their various emissaries.The paper quoted a government source as saying "the hypothesis of a ransom" could not be fully discounted.

Another secret service source said: "At one stage, we were actually quite annoyed that no ransom demand had been made - if it had, we would certainly have paid it then, without a second thought."

Given the necessarily opaque nature of the intelligence community and the sensitivity of hostage negotiation, it is unlikely that the full truth will be known for some time.

But sources at various government agencies told French media that repeated missions by French diplomats to several Arab countries, "including those that keep these Sunni militant groups' in funds", had probably paid off.

Chesnot, 38, of Radio France Internationale, and Malbrunot, 41, of Le Figaro, disappeared on August 20 as they were travelling from Baghdad to Najaf. Their Syrian driver was freed in November.